


Stopped Making Sense

by the_authors_exploits



Series: Strangers in Nothing but Name [8]
Category: Batman - All Media Types, Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: creepy visuals because it's halloween and this fits to come out today, please ship Skuld and Loki with me..., resurrection of a character, the norns are dying
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-10-31
Updated: 2016-10-31
Packaged: 2018-08-28 05:33:10
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 1,966
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8433679
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/the_authors_exploits/pseuds/the_authors_exploits
Summary: Loki dreams at the base of Yggdrasil and prepares to stop Ragnarok





	1. No One Ever Gave Me The Right

**Author's Note:**

> I took creative liberty with The Norns, and Im hoping this helps to start putting the pieces together and help you visualize where we're going :)

Sitting upon the throne had been great, and Loki’s return to Asgard had conveniently aligned with Odin’s Sleep; the only issue had been hiding Odin’s body and attempting to elongate the Odin’s Sleep. But Loki is clever, and had found ways; so he did. He kept Odin under, he shifted into Odin’s detestable shape, and assumed the throne. Not even Frigga the All-Mother had suspected.

And then Thor had to come and ruin the whole thing, spouting off something to do with Ragnarok and Loki’s bringing it.

“I would never bring Ragnarok; not now,” Loki had laughed, even as Thor stripped him of Odin’s shape. “Not when I had the throne, the power; why destroy the universe then?”

Thor had had no response; he had locked Loki in the dungeon, assumed the throne until the new-found Odin would awaken. So now Loki amuses himself within these bland four walls, what little comforts he has, a table and chair, a bed, some utensils; Loki grins.

Ahh, the wonderful sense of power! The feeling of complete control… It’s all Loki has ever wanted, and he had it but for a while; it’s alright. Another scheme will show itself and he’ll have that power back; he’s already located the weakness in this prison, in the sigils keeping his power chained, and he could escape whenever he wanted.

But where’s the fun in that? There’s no possibility yet, to cause mayhem or destruction or hurt, so Loki sits and waits until there’s an opportunity; until something rears its head. Then he’ll grasp it, sink his teeth into it, and he’ll snarl.

It’s going to be so much fun, he thinks, just as the lights are turned out; he glares out to the dim hallway between each cell, listens to the other inmates quiet down. Loki doesn’t belong here; he is royalty, he is power and might, he is above them.

He closes his eyes against the grime of this place and falls to sleep; they’ll see. He will show them what power and evil is.

He dreams; he doesn’t expect to. He’s never dreamed, at least not much, and not vividly. Not like this.

There’s a shrieking that echoes around the void he stands in, something reminiscent of Thanos and his throne world. But this is not outside of Yggdrasil; this is at its base, and Loki glances up at the branches that sway among the cosmos; he drags his gaze downwards, ignores the fissures he sees. This is but a dream; Yggdrasil is not injured.

But as he looks lower and lower, down to the Well of Fate, the shrieking grows strong and he sees them there, hunkered low and weeping; Urd, Verdandi, Skuld… They are shrouded in their capes, Urd in a deep inkiness and Verdandi in a gentle gray and Skuld in a brilliant white. The past, the present, the future; that which was seen and recorded in ink, that which is being seen and is unprocessed, that which is yet to be known…

He knows these three well, though has never faced them; he has heard their voices in walking between worlds, in assuming roles and shapes… They are guidance and guardians, they are simple and kind, they are evil and spiteful; but now, they are grieving, and Verdandi reaches out an ashen arm.

It is bone thin, so very strange for the present time, and she lifts her sunken tear streaked face to implore Loki. “Help,” she hisses in a multitude of voices. “We only wanted to help.”

Urd breathes out a phosphorous green smoke when they writhe at the base of the well, and Skuld kicks over a bucket of sand when he gasps in a deep breath and lets it loose in a scream.

Loki watches them with wide eyes, glances back to the cracks in Yggdrasil; like a mirror shattering, it shudders and they spread, Yggdrasil shakes and its branches creak. The worlds shudder and Loki hears Jormungdr groan from beneath Midgard’s seas. He turns back to the Norns, beautiful even in their oddness.

“What is happening?”

Skuld shakes his head, his foot scratching designs into the spilled sand; they need to throw it over Yggdrasil, bathe it in water and sand to keep it whole, but that isn’t what is causing this. “This is Raganrok,” he wheezes, voice rumbling.

“It’s not time, it’s not time!” Urd, shrieking with smoky breath.

“We only wanted to help, we only wanted to help him…”

Loki knows what they mean, who they are talking about; but they should have known better than to hand a mortal the power of time and space. Untrained, unwittingly unraveling the universe at its seams. “You gave him power.”

“To help!”

“To heal!”

“To protect!”

Verdandi suddenly sobs; Loki has heard them shriek before, in pain or anger, as they are doing now. But he’s never heard them actually cry. But here Verdandi sits with her knees to her chest, heaving and sobbing brokenly, beyond the pain of being torn apart by poison. “He was young,” she says, kind and holy. “He deserved better, and we gave him it; we gave him the tools to survive.”

“You gave him magic,” Loki says, remembering how strong and raw it had been when he tried to draw it out of the teenager’s body. “A mortal; what did you expect? He doesn’t know how to use it, and it’s now run amok. It is destruction.”

“It is eating him!” Skuld yells, and he crawls forward on hands and knees, wraps himself about Loki’s ankle; his touch burns but it’s a welcoming burn. Skuld has always favored Loki. “It is destroying him! He is the center, he is the apocalypse! You must save him!”

Skuld has never begged before; he asks, requests, and Loki delivers; but here Skuld kisses his feet and begs. Loki cannot deny him. “You wish for me to save him; how?”

Urd skritters little giggles and they right themself from their fetal position, a spider emerging from their web. “Save him!”

“How?” Loki buries a hand in Skuld’s lengthy hair; the Norn has yet to detach from Loki’s limbs, and Loki cannot let this opportunity slip by. It’s the first time they have touched. “How am I to save him?”

“Lock his power,” Verdandi sobs. “Capture, contain, repair…”

Loki doesn’t understand; how? How is he to do this?

“You question,” Skuld says and raises from the ground to cup Loki’s face with his long fingers; his nails are painted and they press delicately into Loki’s skin. “We will direct you; the first step…” His breath smells of blossoms and something sterile, like the healers, as he draws closer; their lips brush momentarily, and Skuld mouths directions.

Loki wakes up, slamming back into his body, and he realizes it was not a dream; it was a travel, in spirit and possibly body, as his lips still tingle with the excitement of the future. He has to leave now. This is his opportunity.

Yggdrasil is dying.


	2. But They Gave Us A Reason To Fight

He slips out, following Skuld’s directing, a gentle whisper in his mind; it leads him from the prison cell, to the bridge, to Midgard, to a grave. Verdandi hisses every now and then, and Urd maneuvers his magic into something older, something tainted but powerful, and Loki knows what it is.

Necromancy, yet something more powerful, something Midgard is pooled with; they call it the Lazarus Pit, but it is not healing water. It is the water from the Well of Fate, dripping from Yggdrasil’s branches, puddling on Midgard. The fools, tossing a teenager into it, drawing the Norns’ attention, to the tragic body and wounded mind, and they gifted him with a glory he could not possess.

He had tugged at them, at their kindness, for they hurt every time they cut a child’s life short; to be asked to bring this one back, they had to bless him. And they did, or at least they thought they did. In reality, they cursed him and Yggdrasil shakes and the Norns weep—for the loss of innocence, and for the loss of power.

Their power had been transferred to him, and he was being reckless; he was removing people from the world at seeming random, cutting their string before it was time, unraveling time and space, destroying. And now they had to heal this, so it fell to Loki to do the Norns’ bidding; they could not leave the base of Yggdrasil, and they had to keep the tree intact until Loki could halt the damage.

To begin with, step one was a resurrection; so that’s what he would do. He found the appropriate plot, something private and covered by a statue to commemorate the teenager here.

“Why are you important,” Loki questions and he feels Skuld’s hand at the base of his back, Urd’s breath across his ear.

“He will help heal the child, when everything is done.”

“And now,” Skuld speaks, “is the opportune time to bring him back.”

The mistakes made with the Lazarus Pit are easy to fix; they turn back time on an alive body, and the sand and water fix the tree, though when the boy was thrown in Yggdrasil shook and then stood still for a day—until the Norns accepted the changes. Now, though, with the daily and multiple discrepancies in the timeline, with their blessed child losing his mind, the Norns could not accept it and neither could they fix Yggdrasil.

To draw a body back from the grave is something even more damaging, something more dangerous, so now does seem the opportune time; when Yggdrasil is weak, distracted by the damage the child wreaks, so Loki sits by the grave with his legs crossed and hands cupped perfectly in his lap. He mutters words, and he draws on his power, strengthened by the Norns’ touch.

The ground shudders and there’s a pained shriek; Loki can sense skin repairing, forming, bones knitting, and he blocks out the sounds. This has to happen; this child is important. The ground shudders again, more screaming, this time panicked, and then there is quiet; the statue vibrates and splits down the middle, and then there’s a hand forming above the grave, transported from the casket beneath, up to an arm, a shoulder.

A neck, parts of a head, a cheek, a neck, a chest… Another arm and hand, a waist, organs and a spine; legs too, and lastly clothes, and then the teenager is gasping and coughing and spluttering and his body jerks. He turns to the side and vomits and Loki watches him.

“Welcome back,” he says. “You are important.”

The boy wipes white hair from his face, coughs, and tears streak down his face; “what….what happened?”

“You are important.”

The boy raises wide and terrified eyes on the god; “what have you done?”

Skuld whispers excitedly and floats about Loki, a shimmer in the air, and Urd curls against his side, Verdandi gripping his waist. “I brought you back.”

He looks to his hand, down to his chest where bullets had pierced once. “I should be dead.”

“You should, just like Jason.”

He looks up sharply, stumbles to stand but falls again; he is weak, the magic Loki used untested. “Jason! Wanda! Where are they?”

Loki thinks about that; they are everywhere, they are energy and chaos, they are the world eaters of Ragnarok. “They are destroying the universe; and you are going to help stop them, Pietro.”

Pietro looks at Loki, then down to the dirt he lays on, his grave. “Are they in trouble?”

“They are.”

Pietro knows he shouldn’t trust Loki; but this is his sister, this is his momentary-friend Loki speaks of. He looks back up at the god. “Jason owes me a kitten.”


End file.
